GENEVA (AFP) — The far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) was set to consolidate its position as the country's leading group in Sunday's general elections after a bitter campaign marred by charges of racism, a television estimate showed.
The SVP, already the country's largest party, was set to win 62 seats in the 200 seat National Council, gaining seven after it stirred controversy with an aggressive campaign targeting immigration and foreign criminals.
The campaign sparked wide condemnation and allegations of racism.
"It's the party's best score since 1919," said Yvan Perrin, an SVP parliamentarian.
"It's confirmation that the policy we have been following for four years is bearing fruit," said outgoing SVP parliamentarian Toni Bortoluzzi, who was among some 500 supporters gathered at a tavern to fete the results.
"We corrected the left's mistakes, that's state debt and crime levels among foreigners," he added.
The Socialists, the second largest force in the country, were set to lose nine seats, leaving them with 43, while the business-friendly Radical Party was also set for sharp losses, shedding five seats to 31.
The centre-right Christian Democrats, the junior partner in the four-party government, were forecast to gain three seats to reach 31, level pegging with the Radicals, the estimate predicted.
The nationwide estimate based on exit polls and partial counts also showed a major surge in support for the Green movement in the lower house, just behind the four parties that have shared power since 1959.
The estimate already triggered renewed bargaining to reshape the four-party government when the new parliament elects the seven ministers on December 12, as the SVP sought to exploit its growing strength.
The SVP and its leader, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, fought an unusually aggressive electoral campaign by Swiss standards.
One of its campaign rallies ended in a riot, while a poster showing three white sheep booting out a black sheep drew accusations of racism.
The United Nations expert on racism called for the SVP's poster, which focused on expelling foreign criminals, to be withdrawn.
The SVP has denied racism.
Party president Ueli Maurer told Swiss television on Sunday that the SVP could be seen as a "blend of (late Christian conservative leader) Franz-Josef Strauss in Germany and Margaret Thatcher in England".
Socialist parliamentarian Liliane Maury Pasquier said the SVP had profited from people's fears about globalisation and perceptions of growing economic and social insecurity.
"The SVP dresses all this up in xenophobic and anti-European colours. People think they are defending themselves by voting SVP," she told AFP.
Geneva Green party councillor Alpha Drame, originally from the Republic of Guinea, warned that Switzerland now has "the most xenophobic right-wing (party) in Europe."
"They say that the Swiss get up early and go to bed late -- it is now high time they woke up!," he told AFP.
In percentage terms, the SVP was expected to win 28.8 percent of the vote, compared to 26.7 at the previous federal election in 2003.
The Socialists slumped to 19.1 percent (2003: 23.3), the Radicals dropped to 15.9 percent (17.3) while the Christian Democrats were heading for 14.6 percent (14.4).
Battered by a growing number of landslides and floods, and with winter resorts facing snow shortages, the Swiss placed climate change at the top of their election agenda along with immigration, according to opinion polls.
The Green movement was on course for an unprecedented surge, gaining five seats to 19, while the nascent Liberal Greens tripled their parliamentary tally to three. Combined, they won 11.3 percent of the vote, up from 7.4 percent.
Two hundred seats were up for election in the lower house National Council, where a record 3,000 candidates were standing.
Forty-one of the 46 seats in the senate, the Council of States, will also be decided at the ballot box, with a second round of voting due in several constituencies next week. Both houses have equal legislative weight.
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